Musée et savoir: la question du privé et du public

Résumé

Museologic literature acknowledges a movement which would take the contemporary museum away from its traditional center of gravity, based on collection and knowledge, to develop new interests closer to the public and to communication. To me this is a foreseeable evolution already present at the origin of the museum. The connections of internal functions of the museum, tied with the development and transmission of knowledge, take place in an historical trajectory which places the museum in an intermediate logic between the private and the public. This logic only exists in function of another logic, more general this time, that of separation of private and public spheres in European societies. In this respect, studies of Jurgen Habermas are unavoidable. Positioning the museum in the cultural and social field, they shed light on its contribution to social issues and reveal some original aspects of this participation, including mediatic dynamics. But, far from dwindling with time, this contribution goes on pursuing a dialectic which is based on the intellectual process and on the representation of knowledge. It is in this context that we should understand the present evolution of museums.